Dubai Hospital conducts complex ear surgery

DUBAI, May 13, 2017

An Emirati teenager born with hearing difficulty in one ear is now able to hear clearly after a successful bone conduction hearing aid was implanted for the first time in the UAE on a patient with a thin skull thickness at the Dubai Hospital.

The bone conduction implantable hearing aid usually requires the patient to have a skull thickness of at least 8 mm. However, the young patient’s skull thickness was only 1.5 mm, said a statement from Dubai Health Authority.

Dr Jamal Kassouma ENT Consultant at Dubai Hospital said this new procedure gives hope to patients who wish to regain their hearing ability and lead a normal life, which is why Dubai Hospital was keen to use technology and adapt it to those with thin skull thickness.

"While a lot of the sound we hear travels to our ears through the air (air conduction), we actually hear a great deal through vibrations in the bone (bone conduction)," he noted.

“The young patient who suffered from hear loss in her right ear has a skull thickness of 1.5 mm, which made it impossible to implant a regular bone bridge, which requires that the skull thickness is at least eight millimeters,” he said.

Dr Kassouma and the ET team conducted the surgery that took less than an hour to implant the bone conduction implant hearing aid, where they attached a titanium plate to the skull so that an external device can pick up the sounds and transfer them to the plate, which is attached by a magnet to transfer the vibrations from the right to the left ear.

Before the complicated surgery, the ENT team studied where to place the implant with the aid of CT scans.

“After careful studying of the CT scan we found a limited area with a 3 mm thickness. We fixed the implantation in that area using a titanium screw," he stated.

Dr Kassouma said the surgery was successful and the patient was discharged the next day adding that she won't be needing any rehabilitation following the surgery.

"The advantages of this procedure is that it has minimum to zero complications, does not require a long recovery period and achieves wanted results without any aesthetic compromises as the outer piece of the device can be hidden under the hair," he explained.